


to build a home

by mapyourstars



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Death of a Spouse, Description of Injuries, Description of a Corpse, M/M, Suicidal Thoughts, Unhappy Ending, a pool of the author's tears, allusions to a bomb, ghost!teddy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-26
Updated: 2020-05-26
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:07:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24393256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mapyourstars/pseuds/mapyourstars
Summary: When an auror is killed in action, the entire Department of Magical Law Enforcement shows up to pay their respects. When Auror Teddy Lupin is killed in action, the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, the Potters and Weasleys, Hogwarts staff, countless former students, and the office of the Minister for Magic himself show up to grieve.
Relationships: Teddy Lupin/James Sirius Potter
Comments: 6
Kudos: 33





	to build a home

**Author's Note:**

> i… why. idk. this came from a ship ask meme on tumblr, and i received an anonymous request for a jeddy ghost/living person au… so… **please read the tags/warnings carefully.**
> 
> also, BIG THANKS to my beta, sarah, for being a gem and holding my hand, as usual!
> 
>  **title:** from "to build a home" by the cinematic orchestra ft. patrick watson

“Ted—”

The name gets caught in his throat like a too-large pill.

“Teddy was—”

He forces himself to use the past tense, to acknowledge the impossible truth before an audience of family and friends and near-strangers who mean so much and so little to him in this moment. They will bear witness to his acknowledgement, breathe sighs of relief that he isn’t deluding himself.

“Teddy was my world.”

James stands beneath the fragile, pre-rain sky in an all-black suit he has never had to wear before and should not have to wear now. Black shoes. White shirt. Teddy’s turquoise tie from their wedding three years ago.

“It’s no secret that I was—”

Tenses are slippery no matter how many times James practiced this speech.

“— _am_ energetic,” he corrects himself even though he was right the first time; energy seems a far-off concept. “Flighty,” at least according to a few people in attendance, “carefree, hotheaded…”

His hands tremble and the pages crinkle beneath his thumbs. He wishes they would bruise.

“Teddy grounded me when I needed to be brought back down to earth.” The words blur now as tears cloud his vision, his body’s way of protecting him from the rest of what he wants to say. But he knows it by heart. It _is_ his heart, severed from his insides and smeared across paper, and the words surface around that too-large pill again. “My world. My gravity.”

It occurs to him, as his eyes find their focus on the gleaming, dark wooden box past the edges of his speech, that Teddy should be here to help him through this, and the stupidity of that, the audacity he has to want his dead husband with him at said dead husband’s funeral— James chokes on the urge to laugh. Teddy’s wedding band now hangs with Remus’s and Tonks’s bands on a heavy chain around James’s neck, and he grips them through his shirt and tie.

He crumples the rest of his speech. He has never been one for expressing his feelings with words, especially with people other than Teddy. And without Teddy here to encourage him, to twitch his nose into a pig snout or jab him in the ribs or whisper promises of rewards for good behavior, the words just aren’t worth it. So, he squeezes the papers in his hand and shoves them into the pocket of his trousers, and he doesn’t say anything else as he takes a step back from his place at the head of the coffin.

Others step forward to speak, he’s sure, and others step forward to drop flowers. People are probably sniffling, wiping their eyes, blowing their noses into their handkerchiefs. The knowledge that James isn’t the only one hurting is an annoying flea at the edge of his consciousness. He flicks it away. He doesn’t want anything to do with it or them. No one can feel the way he does in this moment.

His future has shrunk to roughly sixteen square feet.

He wants to yank it open and climb inside, sink into the body more familiar to him than his own, close the lid, drift down into the hole deeper than they are tall, and decay. His insides have gotten a head start on the withering.

James can imagine it, pressing himself to the corpse of his husband and letting his body die.

He won’t ever be able to remove the image of Teddy’s lifeless form from his mind. They’d had to dye his hair, again and again, and the shade still wasn’t right but James hadn’t been able to go through looking at Teddy again to correct it. They’d painted away the circles beneath his eyes, healed the shrapnel wounds on his face and neck, stuffed his clothes where his lost left arm and leg and torso should have been. When they had tried to heal the small love bite on his collarbone, James would have clawed the mortician’s eyes out if Albus hadn’t held him back.

Every inch the casket lowers pulls on James until he’s on his knees at the edge, fingers digging into dirt as if he can plant himself in it. He probably cries, probably sobs with his entire body until not only has he planted himself, but watered himself. He will take root here.

— — —

Teddy watched his own funeral from behind the yew tree, heart no longer physical or functional but broken nonetheless.

The auror department stood at attention in straight rows, ceremonial uniforms pressed and buttons shining, expressions varying from clenched jaws to watering eyes. His family stood closest to his casket; Andy, eyes haunted and wet; Harry, sat in a chair with his head in his hands; Ginny, knuckles white where she gripped Harry’s shoulder; Lily, face pressed to Ginny’s chest and hand clutching Al’s; Al, uncharacteristically showing his devastation in the pinch of his brows and the trembling of his lips as he squatted beside James, knowing better than to touch.

And James. Teddy felt Jamie’s pain as his own. He too mourned the life they should have had, the opportunities they wasted in the years they waited. James shook and struggled to breathe around his grief, and Teddy nearly gave in and went to him, the thread that bound them pulling sharply at the very core of him.

But he wanted James to live, really live, in the present tense dimension his soul was bound to, and that just wouldn’t happen with a ghost for a husband.

His Jamie rarely gave in to his emotions so fully, so publicly. Crying was for the safety of their cottage, the cradle of Teddy’s arms, the quiet closeness of the two of them beneath the sheets. To know he couldn’t prevent James’s pain or comfort him through it was an acute torture Teddy would have to learn to exist with because he would never leave James, not even for death.

James was his life and his unfinished business, a tether Teddy’s being had chosen and would chose again. His very soul, bound to James’s. One day—dozens of years from now, Teddy hoped—James would join him in the afterlife, and they could cross over together. Or maybe they would decide to linger a while, see all the sights they had planned to see in life. Until then, Teddy would wait as James lived for the both of them.

**Author's Note:**

> [twitter](https://twitter.com/mapyourstars) • [tumblr](https://mapyourstars.tumblr.com/)
> 
> thank you tons for reading! if you would like to reblog this on tumblr, the post can be found [here](https://mapyourstars.tumblr.com/post/619207273135374336/41-jeddy). thank you so much ;~;


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